La belle Dame sans Merci Flashcards
what does La Belle Dame Sans Merci mean
The beautiful lady without mercy
what is the plot summary?
unidentitfied speaker asks the knight what paiins him.
the knight is pale, haggard and dying
knight answers that he met a beautiful lady wholooked as if she loved him
he set her on his horse and she led him to a cave
she sung him to sleep
in this sleep he had a nightmare
in this nightmare, plae kings and warriors told him that he had been enslaved by a beautiful but cruel lady
when he awoke the lady was gone and he was lying on the cold hill side
Quotes:
alone and palely loitering - lost and no purpose- contradiction from the depiction of a stereotypical knight
the sedge has withered from the lake and no birds sings (cyclical at the end) - shows loss and death. the lady had ruined everything
I see a lily on thy brow - metaphor- the lily is a symbol for death
thy cheeks a fading rose - rose is a symbol for love. double meaning. he is physically dying but also his love for the lady is turning into despair
full beautiful - a faery’s child - too beautiful for her own good. Femme fatale
her eyes were wild - she is something ethereal or otherworldly
a garland for her head and bracelets too - symbols of love and passion. could they also symbolise him entrapping her - circle semantic field
in a language strange she said I love thee true - destined to be apart. cant even understand each other
I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four - masculinity and patriarchy
pale warriors (…) they cried La Belle Dame sans Merci - masculinity and patriarchy. is the lady the villain. she has done this multiple times
I awoke and found me here on the cold hill side - cyclical structure. shows inevitability.
structure:
Ballad - narrative- poem meant to be sung (romanticism)
4 line stanza scheme (quatrain)
iambic tetrameter (8 syllables per line) - sounds more flowing
Incremental repetition - when a phrase is repeated throughout a poem
Iambic diameter (4 syllables per line) - sounds harsher and more abrupt
aspects of tragedy: Tragic hero’s or tragic victims
the knight undergoes a distrius downfall.
he ends the poem in a libic condiotn, he is beither alive or dead, nether up or down and capable only of relating his story to passers by.
Keats only allows us to guess at the knights life beofre his encounter with the lady and hence see at the height that he knight has fallen.
The knight is a victim of mascultinity in society.
The knight is a victim of the lady’s cruetly.
The knight is a villian in wanting to keep thr lady and not letting her go.
Aspects of tragedy: Resolution
in most dramatic tragedies the resolution is brought about by the deaths of many of the major characters.
however in La Belle the despair s absolute. ‘and nor birds sing’ closes the poem and leaves no room for hope.
this is a deviation from the usual pattern of dramatic tragedies
this leaves the reader to feel no catharsis.
